#878: How to Start When You're Stuck, Finish What You Begin, and Stop Waiting for Inspiration — Creative Advice from Elizabeth Gilbert, Seth Godin, Joyce Carol Oates, Anne Lamott and More

0:00 Hello, boys and girls, ladies and gyms. This is a special ASMR edition of the Tim Ferris show. Welcome. It is very late night after a long day of writing in an undisclosed foreign location, and this is the Tim Ferriss Show. We are going to cover a compilation Uh Incredible insights and advice devoted to a subject very close to my heart and currently consuming a very large percentage of my waking hours, and that is writing. Over the years I have ask some of The most amazing writers.

0:33 I admire questions alike. How do you choose a project and stay with it? How do you begin? When inspiration refuses To strike. How do you build a practice that reliably produces pages? What does your routine look like? How do you keep going when you fear your pages are terrible?

0:52 Garbage. Absolute garbage. That happens, at least to me. You'll be hearing Elizabet Gilbert on choosing and committing to an idea and Lamotte on first drafts. Shitty first drafts at that and taking things bird by bird. Joyce Carroll Oates on why you should never wait for inspiration and Jerry Seinfeld on systematizing your writing session and training your brain. You'll also hear Mary Carr on revision and throwing out twelve hundred pages, Brandon Sanderson on Habits Behind Hundreds of Thousands of Words Per Year. Yes, that is.

1:23 Not a mistake, I did not misspeak. hundreds of thousands of words per year and Seth Coden Coaching me Tim Ferris through my own fear. of bad writing. And I loved putting this together.

1:37 It is exactly the medicine that I need right now. It applies to many creative projects and crafts outside of writing. So please enjoy. This special On the craft. Of writing.

1:52 First up. Elizabeth Gilbert. Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of Eat Pray Love Big magic. And city of girls.

2:00 Her ten books have sold more than 25 million copies worldwide. This Makes me wonder how you choose. And I've wanted to ask you this for a while, and I don't think we got into it in our prior conversation, which is how do you choose Projects. How to spend your time.

2:18 Where to allocate your limited life force. Because there's what do you want, which is where a lot of people would start. Yeah. Although that's a pretty it can be nebulous in a handicapping way because that could take you in All sorts of different directions. Your projects. Things to spend time on. I'm kind of a hard ass about it. Yeah.

2:38 Great. So Part of the thing I've noticed that people tend to get stuck on sometimes is that They get this inspiration, right? So inspiration Comes first. And inspiration is the breathing in of God, right? So like something even the most empirical

2:54 Scientific atheist. people in the world when they talk about Where an idea came from, they say an idea came to me. Like they say that. Like they they don't even know they're saying that, but that's they're reporting accurately what the feeling is. Because that's what everyone I've ever met who's had an idea

3:11 It's the Eureka moment. It's like Oh I just heard Saw felt. an inspiration and I know the difference between something that comes from me and something that comes to me, talking about prepositions again and I think most Creative people do as well. Like

3:23 Oh this came to me. Right. And then it can feel like an assignment or it can feel like a challenge and it's like Now I wanna make this thing. But a place where I think people get Sidracked and distracted. It's very, very, very similar to meditation.

3:37 Like meditation, spirituality and art have so much in common. So this may sound familiar to people who like maybe you've had this experience. You start working on this thing. That was this inspiration. And Couple weeks, couple months into it.

3:50 Yeah. Another idea comes. And that idea seems more interesting than the one that you've already invested some time into. And then you're like, but I don't do this thing. This thing is like fresh and exciting. This is the really, really cool thing, right? And then you Go and do that one and then another idea comes and then it's like

4:09 You know, you're dealing with this melee. So oftentimes people say like To me, I'm working on a book and I'm halfway through it, but I've got this other idea. that I think is way better and this book feels really stale and it doesn't have any life in it. And I always say like Okay, well I give you permission to quit working on that.

4:24 First project. But only if you have a proven track record of ever being able to finish a thing. That is so smart. Yes. Right? Because then it's legit. It's like, no, I've got this better idea. But do you have thirty unfinished things? Because if you have thirty unfinished things now we have a problem. And I have those same things happen to me. Like I'm a third of a way, a quarter of a way, fifth away in a project and And then something so much more interesting comes along and I'm like, but I know enough to know. It comes dancing. It's like a dancing girl. Like it just comes across the stage. The hottest girl at the dance. The hottest girl at the dance. And it's like just showed up and you're like and you've been married for two months. You know, and you're like, Oh, I've been married for two months and the hot But what I know is that

5:10 If I Abandon my let's call it wife. Yeah. This project that I've been working on for a few months to go off with the hot girl. In a few months she's gonna be just as boring and stale. And then a new hot girl's gonna come on. And I'm never gonna complete anything. So you know, stick with the one

5:27 You came to the dance with. And if I've got multiple ideas. And I'm not sure which one I'm beginning. I actually have a sort of like a team meeting. And I make the ideas make proposals to me about how they

5:40 What what do you actually want me to do? Project based IFS. Totally. It's like I'm the Angel investor and these ideas are like, you know, we want your time and money for this. And I'm like, What are you? What do you have for me? Why should I invest my money and time in you? And a lot of ideas when I challenge them like that disappear into the ether because they're like, I don't know something about birds. You know, like they don't like They haven't th I'm like, You haven't thought it out. You know, and then some other ideas like no, I wanna write about this very specific thing and it's gonna take the you know, I'm like, Okay, so this one's got their act together, so when The bird idea is more formed come back. Like come back when you're ready.

6:14 Come back when you're ready to be real and not just to be tantalizing me with Like so I'm a real hard ass about it. I don't mess around. I don't let these ideas push me around. Next up Anne Lamot.

6:27 Anne Lamott is the author of twenty books. Including Bird by bird. Operating instructions. And help.

6:34 Thanks. Wow. And co author. With her husband Neil Allen. Of

6:39 Good writing. I'm gonna ask a question that no doubt you've been asked before, but I have to ask What do you think it is about bird by bird? that affected so many people so deeply. And certainly that's true of many of your other works, but in this particular case, what do you think it is that

7:01 has that type of effect on people. I think it's because I didn't try to con people into thinking that if they just got a book finished that my agent will want to take a look at it by the end of the week and that it would almost certainly be published and that then they would all the Swiss cheese holes inside of them would be healed and they'd be well

7:22 And they'd get that FDA stamp of approval and be validated and then their parents would start to respect them. I said none of that's gonna happen. All of that is an inside job, but I'll tell you a funny story. When Sam's little boy, who's twelve now, was five, I was teaching his kindergarten class. a writing workshop and instead of saying shitty first drafts, I said really poopy first drafts. But after and the kids love me. And after I was done, my little grandchild came up to me and he leaned in and he sounded like Tony Soprano, he said.

7:54 Oh Nana, that was terrible. And I said, What? And he said, You told people you would teach them how to write a book, but you only taught us how to write one page. And that's really what I can help you do is one chapter is on shitty first drafts. I I don't try to teach kids or grown ups how to write really, really well. I just teach them to stop not writing. I teach them to keep their butt in the chair and to write badly, and that all first drafts of any book you've ever read by the authors you esteem most began as unreadable first drafts. And I teach people to take it really small, you know, bird by bird. Is it okay if I tell the story? Please, please. I I I I I would love for you to tell the story just so people know the genesis. Well, my older brother, I was like a superstar achiever in school, and my older brother hated school and he was kind of a rebel. And in California in the fifties and early sixties

8:46 In fourth grade you wrote two term papers. One was the Sacramento paper. That's our state capital, and the other was on birds. And you had to write it all year, all semester, a paper on birds, and my brother hadn't started. It was due on a Monday and on a Saturday he admitted to my dad that he hadn't started. My brother is a tough guy and he he was in tears. And my dad sat down with him and put his arm around him and he said, Just take it bird by bird, buddy.

9:13 You know, first you read about Check this. And then you write a paragraph in your own words about chickadees. And then you draw a picture. And then you take pelicans and you steady up on pelicans, and then you write a paragraph or a passage on pelicans.

9:28 I never ever forgot that. And then years later, probably twenty years ago, so In my forties, I heard EL Doctoro say that writing was like driving at night with the headlights on. You could only see a little ways in front of you. But you could make the whole journey that way. And I think that is the most profound advice I can offer anyone on any topic. that you you you can only see a little ways in front of you and and you can make the whole journey that way. And another th another thing that I think helped people when they read Bird by Bird was

10:01 The chapter on perfectionism. And how perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor. It's the voice of the enemy. And if you listen to it, it keeps you crazy for your entire life because 'Cause we all fall short, you know, you've written books and you think you're creating this golden and crystal palace that people can walk inside of and see all of truth and beauty and reality. And you kind of end up your books and my books All of them are kind of shanty towns, you know, and like in BC during the peace marches where people set up tents and thought it made sense to bring their dogs, you know, during the rainstorm. And that's a miracle. to have written a shanty town. And so I think these ideas of not knowing what you're doing.

10:45 And of letting yourself do it really badly. And to try to help grind down that critical voice. I'll just mention my husband's work here. He he's uh Neil Allen. He wrote Shapes of Truth. And the work he does with people in these shapes of truth is taming the inner critic. And what his position is, you're never going to get rid of it. You know, we don't get over very much here. What he does with people is he has them bring forth.

11:11 the inner critic and actually just put it on the table in front of him and he he thanks them for keeping them ali him alive. When he was six and seven,'cause it critic kept him small. And controllable. So he didn't run out into the street, he didn't swim out past his ability to stay afloat. But that at the age of sixty or whatever We probably don't need it anymore, and so

11:33 He has his clients Give the inner critic a great new job, which might be ethical consultant for the project. So that the inner critic can go off to the library where there's an incredibly comfortable chair and a good reading light and 2000 books. And he will sit there and read, which he loves to do. And when we need an ethical consultation, we'll come get him. But we don't need That constant Is it a l okay to say the F word on OS

12:00 Oh yes, please. So in Bird by Bird, there's a whole chapter on K fucked radio, KFKD. And without a lot of help and a lot of transformation and healing, K Fucked Radio is on 247. It's telling you how far short you're falling. It's telling you how great you started out and what a disappointment you've turned out to be. It's telling you that what you're in the middle of is beating a dead hor on and on and on. And so the shapes of truth work and uh Inner critic work and bird by bird is Ninety percent

12:32 About turning down K fuck radio. Anyway, out of the left hand speaker is all this stuff about That you you can't do it perfectly and that why bother and that this has been blah blah blah. But out of the right hand speakers, the it's like the voice of the people who love you most. The voice of like for me, Sam, or my husband or my two best girlfriends, and they're saying, I love your stories. I love how you write I can't wait to read more. So but you can turn down the left hand speaker and it'll always be there to some degree.

13:04 Next up Joy Carol Oates. Joy Carol Oates has written more than seventy books, including Blonde And we were the Mulvanies. and won the National Book Award for her novel

13:15 Them. I read a a beautiful line from you describing certain aspect of your creative process, and that is this is from the the Paris Review. Art of fiction number seventy two. One must be pitiless about this matter of mood. In a sense the writing will create the mood. And you continue to say later in that same paragraph, I forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing

13:41 has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes and somehow the activity of writing changes everything. Could you ex expand on any of this? I mean, I think it's it's pretty well put, but I know that there are a lot of people who feel they need to get themselves into the mood to write is there Anything else you Could add to this?

14:02 No, I d I definitely feel that. Do you create your mood by by working. And I have a sort of work ethic. A part of the world where people did work rather than just talk about it. And so if you feel That you just can't write or you're too tired or this, that and the other

14:21 Just stop thinking about it and go and work. I mean it's Life doesn't have to be so overthought. We don't have to wait to be inspired. Just s start working.

14:32 Uh particularly we I think first go for our long run and a l nice walk. And think about what you're gonna do. Come home and start working. But try not to be interrupted. That's that's the problem. Most people are living in families or they're living with a partner and the other person has a schedule and expectations. And while you may love your family

14:54 They can be the ones who drain you of energy. For women that's always been a problem. Women. Mm.

15:03 There's nothing wrong with that. W but women find it very hard to say no. Uh, women writers are always being asked to do things pro bono. To volunteer their time to do different things. you know, to read manuscripts and to be on committees and so forth.

15:18 And the instinct is really to say yes. And I I say yes to answer these things. But it's really if you are uh careful Custodian of your own time, like Philip Ross. For instance, or floor bearer.

15:32 You would never give away a whole lot of your time. But Philip Roth would never He wouldn't do one one hundredth of the things that I do. He was too smart. To guard his own privacy.

15:47 Next up Jerry Seinfeld. Jerry Seinfeld co-created and starred in the sitcom Seinfeld. Which ran nine seasons and won ten Emmy's. And later created.

15:58 Comedians in cars getting coffee. And wrote Is this anything? My guiding rule is systemize. What's the problem?

16:08 The problem is like my daughter. My daughter is very creative. She's extremely bright. She's got a Incredible head on her shoulders. And I see myself. In her at that age, she's way further advanced than I was at that age.

16:25 But she doesn't know I I say to her, You y she has a creative gift. Okay. So I say to her when you have a creative gift It's like someone just gave you a horse. Now you you have to learn how to ride it.

16:37 You gotta learn how to ride this horse. And I've seen people that are born by the Dozens and dozens I've seen people that were given Black stallions.

16:48 And It usually kill if you if you have a black stallion like from that movie. And you're born and they just put you on it. And that's what happens. They just put you on it. And you either learn to ride this thing or it's gonna kill you.

17:03 Then we have many, many examples of that. So she's trying to write this thing. She's struggling. I can't write. I keep Putting it off. So I explained to her my basic system, which is if you're gonna write

17:17 Make yourself a writing session. What's the writing session? I'm gonna work on this problem. Well, how long are you gonna work on it? Don't just sit down with an open ended I'm gonna work on this problem. That that's a ridiculous

17:29 Torture. So Put on a human being's head. It's like you're gonna hire a trainer to get in shape and he comes over And you go, How long is the session? And he goes, It's open ended.

17:39 Forget it. I'm not doing it. It's over right there. You've got to control What your brain can take.

17:49 Okay. So if you're gonna exercise, God bless you, and that's the best thing in the world you can do. But you gotta know when's it gonna end. When's the work out over? It's gonna be an hour. Okay. Or you can't take that? Let's do thirty minutes. Okay, great.

18:04 Now we're getting somewhere. I can do thirty. I'm trying to teach my son who knows how to do transcendental meditation. How to do it. I assume you know about that. I do.

18:15 Yeah. Okay, let's do ten. Let's do ten. Let's come up with something you can do. That's where you start everything. That's how you start. To build a system.

18:28 So my daughter so I said to her, You have to have an end time. To your writing session. If you're gonna sit down at a desk with a problem And do nothing else. You gotta get a reward for that. And the reward is the alarm goes off and you're done.

18:44 You get up and walk away and go have some Cookies and milk. You're done. If you have the guts and the balls to sit down and write? You need a reward at the other end of that session, which is stop.

18:56 Now pencils down. So that's the beginning of a system. Yeah. To me. Well

19:04 Help almost anybody learn to write. Uh, which is something you know, I Kinda wanted to teach in a way. Because I find it I think it's so simple. I think exercise is pretty simple too. Mm but people don't

19:19 They don't come up with b good simple little systems. They just try and do it. And that's to me that's you're gonna fail. The simple doesn't mean easy and the point you made. It's simple. The incentives, right? Having a reward, having a defined format. How long did your daughter end up choosing for her writing duration? Or how long have you chosen it? I told her, just do an hour. That's a lot. She says I'm gonna write all day. No you're not. Nobody writes all day.

19:48 Shakespeare can't write all day. It's it's it's torture. Yeah. If you taught a class on writing, what other lessons might you have or resources or anything, exercises. I'm imagining that your daughter could sit down, she says, All right, I have an hour, and then you ask her how her writing session went, she said, Well, I didn't have any idea what to write. So you'd have I don't know what age the students would be in your course, but what else would be a component of your

20:15 Class on writing. Well, I would teach them to learn to accept your mediocrity. You know? No one's really that great. You know who's great? The people that just put tremendous amount of hours into it. It's a game of tonnage.

20:31 You know? How many Are you gonna work? Huh? Week per month per year.

20:38 You might even want to chart that. Or with your exercise if you want to get in shape. I couldn't get in shape. I was like a start as a jogger, you know, like in the seventies and I would run three miles a day and then I got older and I got married late and I had young kids and I really had to get in shape and I picked up this book uh by Bill Phillips called Body for Life.

21:00 Buy for life, yeah. And it's really, really So it's such a System. For a primitive You know, brain.

21:10 I do it to this day. I think it's a work of genius. This book. And it really got me in shape. Because he broke it down. So here's what we're gonna do.

21:20 In minute one. Here's what you gonna do. To minute five, minute twelve. And this is gonna end in uh forty five minutes or whatever it is, and every minute I know exactly what I'm doing. Yeah. And that

21:33 Like turn the key for me and all of a sudden I was getting in shape. I never had to ask, what am I doing now? But what are we doing next? It was very it's like you gotta Treat your brain

21:45 Like a dog you just got. You got it. Stupid The brain the mind is infinite in wisdom. The brain is a stupid little dog. That is easily trained.

22:01 You can't confuse the mind with the brain. The brain is so easy to master. You just have to Confine it.

22:10 You can find it. Yeah. And it's done through repetition and systemization. I One name that has come up on this podcast.

22:22 More than once is Dr. Valter Longo, USC professor with decades of peer reviewed research on fasting, nutrition, and aging. And as some of you long term listeners know or readers, I regularly fast. I've done a lot of experimentations with fasting. over more than a decade, including intermittent fasting. extended water only fasts up to ten days, and I've looked at the before and after. Frankly The fasting has been one of the most incredible unlocks.

22:48 that I have found the before and after looking at glucose control, oral glucose tolerance tests, hemoglobin A1c, et cetera, all these things that really do matter. for the long term, for mental health, for physical health. Have had dramatic Dramatic shifts. And I've talked about that before. But the sad truth. The truth about fasting is that it can be really hard. And that is why Walter is interesting. He's best known for something called the fasting mimicking diet, FMD, which is essentially a way of eating that produces many of the benefits of fasting.

23:19 While still allowing you. To eat. Food. So If we look at that a little more closely.

23:25 He took what he learned in these randomized control trials and so on and packaged it into a five day program called Pro Lon, P R O L O N. It's five days. So for five days. You restrict your food a bit. And What Prolon does is makes it

23:40 Idiot proof. Everything is laid out, there's no guesswork, you just follow the packages. And in scientific studies, five day cycles of the fast and mimicking diet, improved markers tied to metabolic health and aging. Help people drop fat while holding on to lean muscle and even associated with measurable drops in biological age. And to put some numbers to it with glycemic management, blood sugar management. We were able to see in one R C T improvements in fifty three percent of FMD participants versus eight percent of controls. So

24:10 It does make a difference. You get the benefits of fasting, including autophagy, your body's cellular self-cleanup process, while still eating real structured plant-based meals. So You don't have to negotiate with yourself. You don't have to struggle. It all comes in one box and it's right there, laid out, simple to follow. And there are other people who recognize friends of mine like Rich Roll who also have used Prolon. For a limited time, Prolon is offering my listeners 15% off site wide plus a$40 bonus gift. When you subscribe to their five day program, just visit prolonlife.com slash Tim. That's P-R-O-L-O-N.

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26:26 Next up. Mary Carr. Mary Carr wrote the best selling memoirs. The Liers Club? Cherry and Lit

26:34 And her book on writing. The Art of Memoir. Let's talk about Revision. Okay, revision.

26:43 I'm a big revisor. I'm a big revisor. You're a big revisor. But so you have said you know, anyone who's read a rough draft of anything I write is just shocked at how bad it is. It's terrible. And What does the process look like? I mean, I I know this is a very hopefully doesn't sound like a a really naive question,'cause I know that there's a there are many, many aspects to Revision. So I'll I'll lead with just a bit. This is from writermac.com, but car says she takes a hard look at every sentence she writes. Can I make this sentence less boring, more interesting, prettier, more colorful, more true? So that's a teaser. What does your revision process look like? Because I've

27:18 Read that you threw out. Something like twelve hundred pages. Finished pages too. That's not draft. And that was written over about I want to say five or six years. And I remember when I threw it out Tim, I was so upset. I had been well, first off They were about to hang me. I was so late. I was like seven years late on a contract. I mean they

27:41 And so I finally my agent called me and said You know, you're gonna you're gonna have to d I said, you know what? I will sell my apartment and give The damn money back. If they don't shut up and leave me alone. Like I th it's just gonna take me a minute. So anyway, so I'd sent them I don't know. I'd sent them like a hundred and thirty, a hundred and forty pages. And my editor at the time estimated that I'd thrown out

28:05 twelve hundred pages. And Let me tell you when she said that they sucked as bad as I thought they sucked. I mean I knew they sucked when they sent'em, which why I didn't want to send'em. I wanted to keep working on'em, so I just I went to bed for like

28:20 Two days. And I watched You know, Doctor Phil reruns and A lot of cooking shows and I ordered a lot of curry. I think I had a

28:32 And slopped around in my bathrobe. And then I called Don Delilo, who's one of the people I call Uh it's like, you know, the nuclear button, you know, who's like Just the one of the great novelists and who's also happens to be a friend of mine and I said, Don, I I think I'm writing a He's like, What are you crying about? I said, I think I'm writing a bad book. And he said, Well who doesn't?

28:58 And I thought about that and I thought God, he's right. Tolstoy's written bad bo I mean, people I read, uh you know, the every writer I know has written a bad book. So Okay, so Okay, so maybe it's just supposed gonna be a bad book, but it's the book that's standing in line to be written.

29:16 And I think I got I became willing to fail. To just Say what happened. So Basically what it looks like is

29:28 Just clawing through a line at a time or a sentence at a time. I think one example I give in the art of memoir is that when I'm My mother is driving me to college. And I think The sentence I started with was something like

29:44 Mother drove me to college in her yellow station wagon. We stopped every night at the holiday inn and got drunk on screwdrivers. I can't remember. Might have said puke and drunk on sc screwdrivers.

29:58 I somehow was able to remember being in that car. The thing about my mother's yellow station wagon. Was that it didn't have an air conditioner, so the at that time you could buy an air conditioner that's strapped under The dashboard.

30:15 Well it would build up condensation and when she turned right. And I was sitting in the You know, shotgun. The water in the Air conditioner would spill out onto my bare feet.

30:27 And it was icy, icy cold water. And I remembered that we had stopped and gotten a Bushel of peaches in Arkansas. And she was drinking vodka, driving drinking vodka and and orange juice and eating these, watching her eat a peach, you know, when you're seventeen years old to watch your mother eat. And show any desire for anything is just so horrifying.

30:51 You just want to die. There's just nothing uglier than watching your mother eat a peach. When you're seventeen. You just think, My God, woman, shut your mouth. Take a smaller bite. Jesus, it's not going anywhere. You know, but I the smell of the peaches and being In the and suddenly I remembered that I had a copy of a hundred years of solitude. That I had got that was her book.

31:18 But I had started reading and she said, Read it aloud to me. And I remembered reading that book. and driving and I remembered the you know, you grow up around these kind of Texas dirt farms. I mean there's plenty of corporate farming in the state of Texas, but then you get to the Midwest. And it's just so organized. It's just there aren't the rusted cars in the yard and the refrigerator on the porch, you know, it's These

31:45 rows and rows of corn in these big cinnamon colored silos. And I remember driving into that landscape up to that college. And reading that book and thinking I could be a writer. I could I I I somehow was able to remember those details and occupy that body. In space and time, and remember how disgusted I was.

32:12 by my mother and how terrified I was that I wouldn't do well At school that I would fail. I've been such a screw up, you know, I've been arrested the year before. with a bunch of kids and there was a bunch of dope and some of them went to jail and I didn't Because The judge was a guy who had known my mother when she was uh

32:33 A reporter for the local newspaper. And I still remember sitting in h she came to pick me up, we're in a leopard She had leopard skin pajamas. It was July fourth. And she had on a beaver coat with a mink collar. And those leopard skin pajamas in the and this hot

32:51 Night in Kings County, Texas. And here sits his judge behind this liver spotted judge. with these palsied hands and every meal he's ever eaten on his tie. When she came to pick me up and he said, I remember your mother. She was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen And she said, Oh, you old fool I mean It was just like Oh my God, mother, get me out of here. Sucking up is underrated. So anyway, yeah, I think it's it's memory. It's

33:21 I do an exercise with my um I just did it the other day for a colleague of mine, Dennis Pieto, a wonderful young novelist I teach with. And she's teaching an undergraduate class and I said, You know, I wanna do this right. There are ninety kids in the class. She said, I said, I want to do this writing exercise. She well, the writing, you know, it's been uneven. And by said, look trust me, everyone will write well. And you have them

33:47 focus on a room they grew up in and to try to occupy the smell to try to remember a room you were in where your mother's cooking, your grandmother, wherever you s had a good meal. When you were little. And try to close your eyes and smell that. Because you know, smell is the most primordial

34:08 memory and the most emotional memory and it's stored way back in that Snake brain hypothalamus we have that is where all the trouble starts. You try to get in that memory. And Interrogate your body about what you can smell, taste, touch

34:26 And then finally what you want. What are you yearning for and what's keeping you from getting it? Maybe it's a bite of the brisket or some of the barbecue or daddy's oysters coming up out of the fryer or What's gonna keep you from getting it? It's my big footed sister who, as Daddy said, nothing ever got between her and a Bag of groceries. You know, she's gonna get all the oysters and I won't get any. And so it's really more about trying to occupy a former self.

34:54 Cause I think as you know, just as in trauma. The body remembers. The body also remembers beauty. It also remembers pleasure and love and uh those other things too. Next up Brandon Sanderson

35:10 Brandon Sanderson created the Mistborn and Stormlight archive series. Completed Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. and raised more than forty one million dollars on Kickstarter For four secret novels. Are you still

35:25 Teaching the creative writing class. Yeah at BYU. Okay. Bring me on university. What is the first class? First class. So First class is

35:35 Some things I just told you. I get up and I say to them So the very first thing. As I say to them. During this class, we're gonna pretend you want to be a professional writing Right or

35:46 Earning a full time living from your writing. In the next ten years. That we're gonna pretend because Most of you That's probably not why they're there.

35:57 Right. Um most of them they they're just curious. They may have a book in them. And we have this Curious. relationship with art.

36:05 in our society. It is As soon as you say I'm going to write something People like, Oh, when will you monetize it? When will you earn money from it? And

36:14 That can be kind of destructive. Right. Like you mentioned you're writing a book just or you wrote one just because It was niche. You you enjoyed it. I think writing is legitimately just good for people in the same way that working out is good for people. learning to write a narrative and get those thoughts out of your head and page just

36:32 Innately good. Most people when they go play basketball Pretty if they look like me. People aren't going to be like, so when you going into the NBA. Right. But if you write a book, people will say, So when are you going to publish it? And I say to the students, it's okay if that's not your goal.

36:49 If you want to write just for you, if you want to be on the I spend twenty years and then produce one book. Route. Totally fine. However. I want you to know everything you would need.

36:59 to shoot for the highest level, which is earning a full time living as a writer. And everything else falls underneath that. So during the class. We pretend. That that's your goal.

37:10 Once you walk out of it, you can make your own goals, whatever they are. But while we're there We pretend that. And then the second thing I say is you're gonna have to learn when to ignore me. And that is really hard to do because I'm an authority. I'm up there. Uh survivorship bias.

37:26 Says Who knows what I actually say is going to be relevant. Some of it, hopefully, but I can't really determine. What really played a part in me being successful and legitimate. Of course. And I want to approach it as a toolbox.

37:40 giving people all of these various tools, some of which are contradictory. Right? Self contradiction. I can give you examples of that if you want. But You can't use them all. So

37:50 You're gonna have to ignore some of the advice of major authors. Some of the things that Stephen King tells you will be wrong. Some of the things For you Some of the things that I tell you will be wrong for you. You have to

38:02 Find your own way. And so I kind of start off with I'm gonna pretend you wanna be a professional writer and then follow it up with But learn when to ignore me. What are some of the contradictory tools or approaches in the toolkit.

38:15 The one I generally use. As my prime example is when I was studying this before I broke in. Two authors that I admired. I read their books. Uh I read uh On Writing by Stephen King and How to Write Sci Fi and Fantasy by Orson Scottkard. And I read these books.

38:31 And uh I honestly can't tell you one hundred percent if it was in those exact books or other writings of theirs on their websites and things, but Stephen King at one point said Do not. Make an outline. Do not use a writing group. These will destroy your writing.

38:46 And Scott Cart is like I need an outline. It is fundamentally uh vital for me In order to build my book.

38:54 Now Stephen King is what we generally call Uh these are George R. Martin's terms. He's uh he's wonderful the way he speaks about fiction. If you're really interested. Anything George says is golden. He calls them gardeners. Stephen King is a gardener. For Stephen King

39:10 Exploring and discovering his story is the thing that makes him excited. He wants to take a seed, he'll often say I take two really interesting characters. And I put them In conflict. And have something go wrong and I see where the story goes and I just write.

39:25 And he says that if he has an outline, he feels like he's already done that process. In the outline, so when he sits down to write the book. He has no motivation. He's not exploring and discovering anymore. The other group we call architects.

39:38 Architects Like to build a structure. And then it kind of go and take this little piece and then polish that little piece and see where it goes and then take the next piece that they've already built as part of their structure and build a story around that. And most people are somewhere in between these two extremes, but those were two extremes where I realized

39:58 I can't do both of these. I can't both not have an outline and have an outline. I can have a hybrid approach. But If you try to take both of their advice. Equally weighted. then you're gonna get nowhere.

40:10 You can try both methods. In different ways. You can try some hybrids. But a lot of things you'll learn in writing, you kinda have to choose one or the other and try it out and see how it works for you. What are some of the assignments that have most resonated with students or you think best served them, even though they might not recognize it.

40:32 What I generally do is I Follow a A focus on habits approach. Instead of giving them specific writing exercises, I can give them if that someone comes up to me and says, I'm having trouble with X. I'll give them a writing exercise.

40:46 to work with that. If someone comes up to me and says, I am having А ладов тробо. going back and revising my chapters over and over again instead of writing the next one. I'll say okay. Try writing longhand.

40:58 Uh this works for some people. Um, you go, you take a page of paper, you write it longhand, and you tell yourself it doesn't have to be perfect until I put it into the computer. And you start each day. r taking what you wrote before and putting it to the computer. And then leave it alone and write your next chapter longhand. And then use that process to kind of

41:17 Get yourself back into the writing, but then forcing yourself to do something new. That works for some people. If people are having trouble with dialogue, I say, All right, go do the exercise where you sit. And listen to people on campus. And you just write down exactly what they say.

41:34 Exactly as it said, And then Take it and try to write it under different styles of dialogue. If you're writing like Soderbergh how would you do it? Pick some of your favorite people, go watch their movies.

41:47 write down the dialogue and compare that to the real life and just kind of like Figure out what kind of dialogue you like to do. Those are exercises. But in general, I'm only doing that when I'm diagnosing a problem. For the class, I'm saying your job if you want to.

42:04 Try to be a professional writer. You're gonna have to write Consistently. Nine out of ten writers that I've found are that do better with consistency. One out of ten is a binge rider.

42:15 I don't understand binge riders as well, but I can talk about that. Those are the people who go. Rent a cabin. Take two months. Walk in without a book. Come out with a book.

42:25 And then they don't write for ten months. Um right. Most people are better served. By writing a certain amount every day. really consistently or at least two or three times a week. and building a novel.

42:39 out of good habits. And I focus on that. I'm like, break it down. Set a goal. Have a spread sheet. And try to hit your word counts. Or at least your hour counts.

42:50 If you're having trouble doing this, go to a specific place every day that you do this, that you don't do a lot of other things. Go to the coffee shop, go to a certain room in the house, turn on certain music that you only turn on when you're writing. Build that habit. So that you are very consistent. Batch. Your writing time. If you there's something you already do every day. If you go you already have build a habit to go to the gym.

43:10 Then Try to align your life so that you go to the gym and then have an hour to write. Think about where you're gonna write at the gym, sit and write for an hour so that you're adding onto a habit that you've already built. And that's my focus in the class is really

43:25 Be consistent. See if you can write. The goal is in the class to write thirty five thousand words. Classes around A third of the year. If you do that. all year, you will end up with a hundred thousand words, which is your average novel.

43:38 Let's hit some top line. Habits. Okay. From Brandon. How many words Per year on average, would you say? You put down my goal

43:49 is two thousand to twenty five hundred words a day. So Yeah now. Whatever ten pages to twenty pages. um is what I'm looking at. Depends. I mean, I write in the old school manuscript format.

44:04 Where everything's twelve point and in courier and It's a a holdover from the days when certain type setting things are done that are too nerdy perhaps to talk about here. But I think in words. So I do two thousand twenty hundred five hundred. Those are new words. Those are new words. Now when I'm doing revisions.

44:21 I'm not writing new words. And I would say around a third of my time. is spent on revisions depending on the year. And this is the thing. Some years I'll do a lot of words, some years I do a lot more revisions.

44:33 It really depends. But if we're looking at two thousand words a day. Times fifty weeks. Like that can produce quite a lot of words, right? So ten thousand words a week is what that would turn into. That's five hundred thousand words a year. Is what I could theoretically produce.

44:50 Now Third of my time's done. to revision. So Really I'm looking at around three hundred thousand words.

44:57 A storm led archive book is eighteen months. Of work. For that reason and things like that. Last but not least Seth Godin.

45:07 Seth Godin has written twenty-one bestsellers published in forty languages, and Including Purple Cow? Lynchpin. And the practice. And a daily blog of more than 10,000 posts.

45:19 All right, so I'm gonna personalize this selfishly because that is my nature. Uh to flashback Now I'm going to create a montage of dinners with Seth. This is uh this is just a portion of our exchange in the last dinner, same dinner where I misattributed this book to you as a recommendation. Where I asked you for advice. Because I was feeling stuck. with writing.

45:44 And you very very uh observantly replied, didn't we talk about that eight months ago the last time we had dinner? And I said, Yes indeed, we did. It shows you how little progress I've made. And Whether this is just an opportunity to showcase my insecurities

46:02 I don't know, but I would love to hear What you think it is. That I torture myself with or that tortures me.

46:11 That leads me to ask you These types of repeated questions on different occasions because you are As much as anyone I know, you seem. Right, from the outside looking in. And maybe it's like the calm duck on the surface kicking like hell underwater. I don't know. You seem to be a relatively unconflicted person. You're not like biting your nails.

46:34 fretting about doing A or B. You seemed a pretty Calmly do your thing. And I wouldn't dis describe myself that way. So in what you've seen, is there Is there any uh sort of outside perspective where you're like, I think that these are some of the reasons Tim gets tied up in knots.

46:51 Is there anything that you have to Okay well First of all, if I'm making you miserable at dinner, I apologize. That's certainly not. No, no, no, no, you're not. No, I I love our dinners. So I uh I think that's just a segue in the conversation. You left out the thing I said. After I said the thing about eight months, which is Where's your bad writing? And There's no such thing as writer's block.

47:14 Writer's block is real, but it does not exist. What it really is is misname. I have a fear of bad writing. I have a fear of what the world will say. When it encounters my bad writing.

47:27 And The way through. is to do your bad writing. You don't have to ship it to the world, but you have to do the bad writing. And

47:36 Bad writing Over time if you do enough of it. Can't persist. Good writing will slip through. And I learned this from Isaac Asimov. He and I worked together on a project years ago. He published four hundred books back when it was hard to publish books.

47:53 Four hundred bucks. And he told me Yeah. Every morning sorry, that's the volunteer fire department. Every morning For six hours he would sit and type.

48:03 And it didn't matter if it was good or not. He had to do six hours of typing. Now obviously he didn't have a typing problem. Just about anybody can do six hours of typing. And then at the end of the shift. He would look.

48:15 Throw out the bad writing and whatever was left, what was left. And the subconscious Understood. Yeah. If he's gonna type anyway, you might as well type something good. So he got through the bad writing thing.

48:27 And In your case. Yeah. So much skill. And such a benefit of the doubt from people you've earned it from.

48:37 That it's really likely. That you're saying. Why do I need to get back into that? There's nothing but downside for me. Because You know how to make.

48:47 One of the world's best podcasts. You do it on the regular. People really like it. When you write a book, they roll their eyes, they read the whole thing. What aren't you proud of me? What a pain in the neck. It takes a year. Just Do the other thing. And So I totally get that feeling.

49:02 And This is where we lead to the second part about being conflicted. And it's It's a small Nike riff. Which is

49:09 That just do it. We're not going to go into the origin of that phrase coming from a a mass murderer, but Just do it. Impact. Hold on, is this like a Manson family reference or Mary Gilmore?

49:21 Wow, I have no idea. All right, that'll be for people Do re research on their own. That was the last thing he said before they killed him. Wow. Just do it. Now you'll never be able to unsee that image. Sorry. Just do it implies what the hell?

49:35 Doesn't matter. That's Not a good way forward because it pushes you to be A hack who's not responsible for your own work.

49:45 The alternative is to replace the word just with the word merely. Merely do the work. That the time you are spending Narrating. yourself doing the work.

49:56 The time you're spending catastrophizing the work. is not helping anything. And so I was A really

50:05 Insecure. Flailing. Failing entrepreneur. for at least eight years in a row. Just consistently failing.

50:12 Barely Breaking even. Getting close to bankruptcy on a regular basis. And I was Willing.

50:19 Things to work out. And I was spending a lot of time Dramatizing. all of the perfect problems that I was confronting. And then

50:29 I was able to shift. To merely doing the work. Without the narrative and without the drama. And as soon as we can merely do the work. Then there's room.

50:41 To see what needs to be seen. So I don't believe in the muse at all. I don't think there's any outside force. I don't think talent Really matters. I think what matters

50:50 Is Choosing To find your smallest viable audience. Understand your genre. and explore what it means to make magic in the small.

50:59 So you can do it again. Two things. The first is You are a delightful dinner host and I love our dinners. So not to cherry pick and make this look like a uh sort of Okay, invited back. To make yeah, this is not sort of a collage, video collage of like NASCAR accidents that I want to paint as the experience at at your house. That's not not the case at all. Number two

51:25 I would love to Ask about The Decision. The point at which you decide you have something. that you would like to publish or share.

51:35 and that quality cutoff or how you think about it because in my Head. The uh Helpful and self defeating, depending on how you want to look at it. Perfectionist side of things. Will for instance look at something I wrote.

51:49 in two thousand ten and say I can't do that anymore. And If I practice, I could still practice for weeks. and publish something on the blog and it would not be that good.

52:01 Therefore, I'm not going to publish because I feel like people will be disappointed or I will be letting them down and that the attention they'll spend on it will not derive. Or return as much value to them. Right. So this is that That's the voice. That is the the deliberation that I have in my own head.

52:18 And I do actually have hundreds of drafts. Like I have shitty Stuff. but it's never quite crossed the chasm into good enough to publish. So I've been

52:31 stymieing myself in that respect. And there is part of me that's like, you know what? The podcast is easier. It's fun. I feel like it's a craft I'm still improving on. Why don't I just do that? There is part of me that says that, and there's another part that says that's a cop out. In fact, you know the writing helps you to learn to think is Kevin Kelly to invoke that name again, right? He writes

52:51 To think. He doesn't think and then write. And that I'm shortchanging myself by using perfectionism as And out. Yeah. If

53:01 Hearing all of that, what What comes to mind for you? Well, I I'll share my personal experience, but first I wanna challenge something you stated as fact. Which is

53:12 that the writing isn't good enough to publish. Says who. This is me. Right. Right. So it's not that the writing isn't good enough to publish. It's that when you look at the writing Your analysis of where you are in the marketplace and the promise you'd like to make and keep.

53:31 Doesn't Match. the writing that's in front of you. But I dare say As talented as you are at so many things.

53:38 This might not be your best skill. Knowing. When it's ready to publish. Yeah, true. And it may make sense in this world where it is ever easier to hire somebody

53:51 to do the thing they are good at. To say to this person. Here's five thousand words. Aimed at this kind of reader. Tell me where I'm

54:01 Got light and tell me where I should Take stuff out. Because The way You get.

54:08 My my friend. Uh who I went to business school, Evan. climb Mount Everest back when that was a very big deal. And I had never seen any I mean there was no YouTube or anything.

54:16 And I was quizzing him, what's that like? Well, he said That the first Weeks. are just spent walking up this trail. It's not that hard a trail to walk up.

54:26 with tea houses along the way and stuff like that. It's only toward the end. Once you've committed to climbing Mount Everest, that Mount Everest actually gets really hard to climb. And it's a fortunate coincidence for the climbers that it happens in that order.

54:42 Because your sunk costs have increased so much by the time that it gets serious that you're too embarrassed. to turn to your peers and say I can't put in the work. And So what you're doing before you get

54:56 So the hard part is you're inventing A reason to stop. And you said something that was really poignant. But did you look at stuff you wrote in twenty ten? And you say, I can't do that anymore.

55:07 Well, Two things happened to me. First twenty years ago. I wrote a book called Permission Marketing. It became a New York Times bestseller and I said, I'm done. What could I do?

55:17 First time out of the gate'cause I'd been a book packager before, but this is my first quote real book. How can I beat that? So I stop. I just stop. And I sat in the dark.

55:26 For a year. I just didn't do much of anything because I said I can't Hit lightning like that again.

55:35 And thanks to Malcolm. He sent me he was unknown. He sent me this new book called The Tipping Point. And he asked me to write Uh

55:44 A blurb for it. And I read it in one night. And realized that without Knowing it, I had been writing a book about how ideas spread. And in the next

55:55 Twelve days. I wrote. A two hundred and twenty five page book. And I sent it to Malcolm and I said, Look, I if you want me

56:05 To not publish this'cause it's Seems like you unlocked the key and I don't wanna take away anything from the tipping point. I will stop and just throw it out, but I needed to get this out of my system. And he was such a mention. He gave me his blessing and wrote the foreword.

56:19 And I realized in that moment I couldn't write permission marketing again. That day was gone. But I could write this book and someone would benefit from it. And then 10 years later, the same 2010 you're saying. I wrote a book called Lynchpin.

56:34 And I will never be able to write a book that good again. I'll never write a book that goes that deep close to my bones. Yeah. Makes me feel

56:43 the way that book made me feel. And after that book came out I felt the same way again. Which is Well I if this is the journey, I found the end of the journey.

56:54 And I realized Six, nine months later. That that was selfish. And that leads to the other He

57:02 thing I want to talk about, which is generosity. Generosity doesn't mean free. People pay For our surgeon who's gonna save their life. Generosity means

57:12 That you're Spending emotional energy, emotional labor. To help somebody else. And as soon as I could shift it around in my head to say There somebody over there who could use a hand.

57:24 Then it wasn't about me anymore and I wasn't parading anything. And it got way easier to merely do the work without commentary because there's somebody over there I'm doing it for. Here we go. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading. albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests, and these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then

58:24 I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash. Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.

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